Brand new they are 1.5K when they're on sale. Also I don't know if you guys know but batch 1 and 2 units are a lot more unreliable than later batches.
might not be 1.5 when they reappear.
plus, why do you think that later batches are more reliable?
It is unlikely that he has batch 1,2 since he had them for 5-6 mo and batch 1.2 was last summer (7-8 mo).
It is much more likely that 5-6 mo old miner will continue unperturbed that a brand new one would work as expected: see posts re Feb batch, quite a few duds there.